


The Trials of a Hawkeye Christmas

by NightsMistress



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: F/M, contains veiled reference to sexytimes, missing sequence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 20:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/pseuds/NightsMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate's in a filthy mood following Clint's misguided attempts to skip town and is in dire need of something to vent her anger on. It's a good thing that Tommy understands this need.</p><p>(Takes place following Hawkeye #6 and includes references to Young Avengers #6)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trials of a Hawkeye Christmas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [failsafe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/gifts).



> Thank you to false_alexis for the last minute beta and to nerdrage who always has my back for these things ♥

The difficulty with being one of the two Hawkeyes is that when one of the Hawkeyes decides to be a complete melodramatic asshole and give you his bow before attempting to skip town out of a misguided sense of altruism, it is up to you to clean up the mess. In this case, Kate chooses to interpret “clean up the mess” to mean “make the dumbass stay rather than run away”, leave his bow and quiver inside his apartment, and storm off dramatically to make sure he doesn’t return it.

Kate’s dramatic departure from Clint’s apartment continues down the street, where she is stymied by, of all things, a traffic light. She taps her foot against the pavement while she waits for the light to change, the sole of her boot hitting the concrete underneath the snow, and fumes.

She’s angry, but underneath that she’s tired. Kate is tired of trying and failing to fix the damaged people in her life. She cannot understand how it is that Hawkeye, an _Avenger_ , can have turned his life into a spectacular soap opera-esque car crash existence, but he has. She couldn’t help but notice that he still lives out of boxes, despite having moved in months ago. He always seems to have a bandage over healing injuries, and she would have to be stupid not to understand that all of this is part of a slow, painful self-destruction that will only end in heartbreak for everyone: his girlfriend, his work-wife, his ex-wife and whatever Kate is to him. She thought they were partners. Perhaps her definition of partner is different to Clint’s, but she refuses to watch him destroy himself. The problem is that stopping him seems to require her to be his mother and that makes her furious. She has enough to do and take care of without looking after an ostensible adult. She wishes Clint was here so she could tell him that.

The light changes and her phone buzzes. It’s a text message from Billy doing his weekly check in. They’d decided, once Billy crawled out enough from his depression to interact with people again, that he would check in once a week or Kate would come and visit him to lever it out of him that way. The message is short: _Doing okay. School sucks._ She wants to blow it off and tell him to bother her later. She can’t deal with him as well as everything else in her life, so she texts a quick, thoughtless message of _Merry Christmas_ as she crosses the street. Billy replies with _Happy Hanukkah_ , and she winces at her faux pas. Clint must really have her riled if she forgot that Billy was Jewish.

“Sorry,” she says aloud. She holds herself to a higher standard than this. She’s mostly sure that Billy won’t take it personally, but the fact of the matter is that he didn’t deserve her blowing him off like that. “I’m in a crazy bad mood.” No one around her reacts. One of the benefits of New York is that if you’re not obviously nuts -- and therefore worth a wide berth -- people tend to ignore all kinds of idiosyncrasies out of sheer apathy. It’s one of the things that Kate loves about New York. That, and the alleys that wind their way between buildings. She eyes them off speculatively.

Kate knows that she shouldn’t take a shortcut through them. There’s been reports of increased muggings of late, and she’s left the only weapon on her in Clint’s apartment. But something angry and pugnacious inside her compels her to jut her chin in defiance, step over a sleet puddle and into the nearest alley. It shaves ten minutes off her walk to the nearest subway station, she tells herself. The fact that this was where the highest concentration of muggings took place over the last month is just an added bonus.

She can’t help the slow smile that creeps across her face as she catches someone moving out of the corner of her eye, hears their footsteps as they step through the snow. She’s sure that they think of her as how she used to be: weak, fragile, naive. Helpless easy prey for the taking. Her smile takes a cold edge when she thinks that she isn’t the first person they’ve caught like this. They would have caught other girls just like how she used to be, hurt them like she was hurt, and that righteous fury washes away any kind of worn out frustration. For most people, the movements of her to-be assailants would be too quiet to hear, but Kate’s been trained by the Avengers and was half-expecting the sound in any case. In fact, she wants it.

She whirls around as someone reaches for her throat from behind and dispatches him easily. On the ground, sprawled on the snow and sleet, her assailant looks like any other guy on the street. The completely innocuous face, looking like any other, made her gut twist and she kicks him once to make him stay down. He’s semi-conscious at best, staring up at her with unfocused, hazy eyes, like he can’t comprehend his victim fighting back.

“Don’t you know who I am?” she says, her voice thick with scornful disgust. “I’m Hawkeye.”

It doesn’t help her feel any better, and she stalks through the alley to the other side. 

The rest of her trip home is uneventful, to Kate’s annoyance. She’s in the mood for some vigilante justice, to feel like she’s accomplishing _something_ as Hawkeye that isn’t the helpless witnessing of someone’s self-destruction. The fact that no one has had the good grace to attack her annoys her more than she would like to admit.

It’s this pent up frustration that means that when she sees Tommy on her doorstep, trying to look innocent and failing, that she snaps “ _What_?” at him.

Tommy, to his credit, doesn’t take it personally. “It’s been a while,” he offers with a cocky tilt to his head and quirk of his lip, folding his arms as if daring her to punch him. “Thought about breaking in, but you bitched the last time I did that.”

“You’re standing on my doorstep,” Kate says. She curses herself in her head immediately after saying that. Tommy has always been willing to take even the smallest compromise as a red carpet invitation, testing his boundaries until they destruct or hold up against even his efforts. She’s not sure what annoys her more: that he’s here and he’ll test her boundaries and her resolve to not throw him up against a wall and kiss him with her teeth and tongue until he’s squirming eagerly under her hands until she feels better about something in her life, or that he is just another complication in her already incredibly complicated life. She expresses all of this with a heartfelt, aggrieved moan.

“I don’t have a key,” Tommy says. “And, again, the bitching and moaning.”

“Augh!” Kate declares. “Get out of the way.” Tommy steps aside and Kate forcefully shoves her key into the lock and twists it. For a moment, the key bends like it is going to break off in the lock, but the tumblers turn over and the door unlocks before that happens. She gestures as sardonically as she can. “Make yourself at home.”

Tommy does, sprawling on the couch like he owns it. 

“Where have you been?” Kate demands, sitting on the accompanying recliner chair and leaning forward, her elbows on her knees. She remembers from her reading of various business magazines that it suggests power and control, both of which she sorely needs at the moment. 

“Work,” Tommy says.

Kate stares at him. 

“You have a job?” she says finally.

“Uh, yeah?” Tommy says. 

“Doing what?”

Tommy shrugs. “Stuff. Anyway, that’s not important.”

Kate is skeptical of this. It’s always been her experience that the less explicit Tommy is about something, the more she should know about it. She raises her eyebrow but says nothing.

The silence stretches for a minute and a half, at most, before Tommy fills it with words.

“I make computer parts. Superspeed. It’s _terrible_ but it pays. Not as good as stripping but apparently I don’t have the tits for it.”

Despite herself, Kate starts to think about possible jobs for Tommy to do with her father’s organization. It’s a problem that is easily solved, for someone who she knows undervalues his own potential despite Kate telling him what it is when he’ll let her, and Kate is short of both problems and good friends at the moment. “Tommy, I can get you a better job,” she says slowly. “You can even keep your clothes on if you want.”

“I don’t _want_ your job,” Tommy says with a scowl. “I have one already. It’s crappy but it’s mine.”

While she won’t deny being slightly hurt, Kate can understand his perspective a little. For a while she resented the benefits that her father’s status conferred to her. She found the parties she had to attend boring, and felt that the victories she had were lesser because with money comes privilege. Being Hawkeye was the first thing that she had had where no one cared who _Kate Bishop_ was. Instead, what they cared about was how they could punch her in the face. Kate found that refreshing.

She could understand, though, the desire to create the future you were going into with your own hands.

“Coffee?” she says instead. “I’ll even make it how you like it; strong enough to corrode the spoon.”

“You’ll need it more than me,” Tommy says. “What are you doing tonight?”

Normally Kate would assume this was an invitation to flirt, and maybe have sex. Sex with Tommy is normally energetic, acrobatic and fun, and it’s something that she tends to bask in the memories of it for a while afterward. Tonight though, she’s not in the mood for fun, playful sex. She’s wound up too tight from her confrontation with Clint and she wants to let off some steam, preferably by punching something or someone. 

“I meant, what is _Hawkeye_ doing tonight?” Tommy clarifies. Kate’s eyes widen as she takes in his meaning. She knows she shouldn’t go out tonight. She’s in too filthy a mood, and an angry street-fighter makes mistakes. Now that she has calmed down enough, she can admit that going into that alley alone was a mistake. However, with Tommy accompanying her she’d be more alert, more focused and more heroic. Solo vigilante work is dangerous work and also the loneliest. Partner work has a synergy that is greater than the parts, and now that the proposal’s on the table she realizes that this is what she actually wants. She wants to be better than she is on her own. A confident smirk sneaks across her face. 

“I think she’s in the mood to bring gifts to all the naughty boys and girls in New York.” She slants an arch look at Tommy, raising an eyebrow. “Do you think Speed is going to keep up?”

Tommy snorts. “Hawkeye’s going to be eating Speed’s dust.”

Kate refrains from pointing out that if anything, she’d be eating his sleet, because that wouldn’t fit the rhythm. In spite of herself, she can feel her mood brightening. It’s always been Tommy’s talent, shifting Kate towards something productive to use her anger for. 

“Wait here,” she says, standing up. “I have to get my costume. Yours is in the cupboard.”

Kate has always kept a set of everyone’s costumes, even Cassie’s, in the cupboard closest to the front door. She keeps Cassie’s up the front, so that she has to see it every time she opens it, because she can’t bear to think that Cassie might be forgotten. Cassie would have been someone that Kate could talk to about Tommy and Clint, how they were both so aggravating and insisted on making their own disasters to clean up. Kate misses her more than she could say. In a way, the neatly folded sets of unstable molecules was more sad than Clint’s boxes. Tommy’s costume sits behind Cassie’s, tucked away so that all that is visible is the orange glint from his goggles. In a way that fits; Tommy has always hidden the things that he is most fond of away from sight, and tries to pretend he doesn’t care about it half as much as he does.

Kate keeps hers in her room, along with her weapons, and is relieved that she doesn’t have a landlord to do inspections. Once she’s dressed and armed, she heads back into the living room where Tommy — now dressed as Speed — is adjusting his goggles.

“There is no way you can make those look good,” she says.

Tommy grins, easy and charming, as if he didn’t have to reach across a dead girl’s dreams of being a hero to reach his own costume. “Sure I could.” He doesn’t sound distressed, but Kate still feels a flicker of guilt about that.

“We’ll just do one lap,” Kate says. “I’ve got things to do in the morning.”

“Yeah, yeah, one lap around the neighbourhood,” Tommy agrees, clearly eager to be off by the way his fingers are tapping against whatever flat surface he can reach. Kate’s equally eager, now that the opportunity has presented itself, but she manages to control herself from forming a one piece percussion section.

They exit by the roof. Kate stays overhead while Tommy drops down to street level. It’s a system they’ve followed in the past: Kate can travel faster through the roofs and fire stairs, while Tommy is fast enough to avoid being caught in crowds. Familiarity in this case focuses her eagerness, directs it towards a fierce determination to protect her city along with the superhero who is never too far from her sight. It’s never truly quiet in New York, especially Manhattan, and while there have been efforts to clean up the streets, ‘safer’ is not the same as ‘safe’. 

As such, she wasn’t surprised when they discovered a mugging. There’s two guys in balaclavas menacing a couple, having just demanded her purse or else. Tommy glances up at her and she gestures: she’ll take one and he’ll take the other. He nods, a fierce-edged grin creeping across his face at the prospect of releasing some of the tension that is always keeping him coiled up like a spring.

Kate crouches on the fire escape, keeping her bow steady as she surveys her target. He’s the main aggressor, the one leaning in the woman’s face and screaming at her that if she doesn’t do as he wants, he’ll cut off her pretty boy’s face. Their victims look frightened and determined at the same time.

She takes a breath, holds it and releases it slowly, focusing solely on the arrow. Trick arrows are difficult because they don’t fly as true as ordinary arrows, but Kate has the experience that she really must thank Clint for later. It flies true and Kate spares a thin smile as it strikes her target in the face, covering him with sticky goo.

Tommy is moving the minute he hears Kate’s arrow fly, knocking the ringleader to the ground with a shove. The other guy, a thinner, weedier guy, tries to throw a punch at where Tommy is. Of course, it’s where he was, because Tommy is already out of the way with a derisive laugh, dodging easily before punching the other guy in the face. He goes down. Most people do after being hit by Tommy, even when he is pulling his punches..

Tommy hands the purse back to the lady with a flourish, and Kate has to stifle a laugh at how ridiculous it all is. Still, there’s something to be said for superheroes doing ridiculous things after superheroics. Some part of Kate mentally catalogues Tommy’s flourish as something that maybe they could market when they reform the team, and then she smiles at her optimism.

The rest of their patrol is uneventful, and Kate finds herself keyed up with post-mission adrenaline after they secure the latch on the window of her apartment. That earlier thought of pinning Tommy to the wall and kissing him forcefully until he squirms underneath her is sounding _very_ good at the moment. “You have somewhere to stay?” she says to Tommy.

“Nah,” Tommy says. “I figured I’d find something on my way back.”

“Stay here instead,” Kate says. He does. It never takes much convincing to encourage Tommy to stay the night. It would take more encouraging for him to stay the next day and Kate chooses not to, though she’s tempted to try when Tommy kisses her goodbye. He kisses like he lives life, hard and fast and leaving bruises behind, and Kate’s left breathless for a minute. In that moment, he’s out the door. It’s how it’s always been. It is, after all, one of the trials of being in an open relationship with a stray cat of a superhero.

Later on Kate returns to Clint’s apartment and leaves a Christmas card under the door. Just because Clint is stupid doesn’t make it any less Christmas, which is what she wrote on the card. Then she makes her way back to the street, her debt repaid for his having trained her to use a bow and arrow more effectively. Christmas shopping won’t do itself, even if you are by far the most functional of the two Hawkeyes.


End file.
